All of the skulls were painted or drawn from life and were from my own personal collection. While some of the drawings and paintings were merely studies, creating them was still a process that took a significant amount of time and focus. Not a single day was missed and each work was created on that specific date.

I hope you will take a few minutes to click through these works.

DAY 1 / HERON

DAY 01 / 01 OCT 2016

30 skulls/30 days/day 01: heron

9x12 inch oil on unstretched canvas

NOT FOR SALE

I love the elegance of this skull. It's long and sleek, unbelievably light and delicate. Imagine all this beautiful bird must have seen flying over the landscape and standing in shallow water hunting fish.

Today was a lesson in discipline. At the end of a hectic day, I had to focus and put this oil study down quickly without thinking. Oil on paper is not as forgiving as on panel/canvas. I made my marks carefully and was happy with the outcome.

Alla prima sketch of a domestic pig skull—because when you know people, who live on a farm, and they take you to their bone pile up in the woods, and they give you trash bags and say, 'You can take whatever you want." So you come home with two trash bags full of skulls and bones.

I've painted this beaver skull before, minus the mandible. When I went to draw it, I found that the mandible told more of the story than the skull itself. A slight deformity caused the lower teeth to grow at an angle, causing them to not wear properly. The skull itself has unusual wear caused by improper seating of the mandible. Based on the length and uneven wear of those lower incisors, I can only imagine the discomfort this poor animal must have experienced.

Less is more. This is my favorite so far. I found this skull on our very first walk through our woods when we moved in. Silly, but it just felt like a small gift from our property saying we found our home. I am so grateful that we get to live on this beautiful property and watch this beautiful animal every day.

We have coyotes that run our area, every so often we hear them at night down in the lower woods yipping and carrying on. It's eerie sounding. My dog Kalina, does not like to be outside when she hears them. I'm convinced she'd take off and leave me to fend for myself if confronted by one.

If you don't know what a civet looks like, google it. It's a pretty crazy looking African/Asian mammal. I drew this during my daughter's soccer practice tonight as the sun was setting. It was very cold. You can burn a lot of calories shivering. I was multi-tasking.

This badger skull was the very first one I acquired. I was struggling with inspiration after I had my daughter. Tooling around on ebay I found this skull and I thought eh, I'll buy it and draw it. I bought it for $25. This is where it all started

Squirrels. I have a love/hate relationship with them. They play with my dog through the window, it's cute. They also hang from my bird feeder—awkwardly staring me in the eye as I pound on the window and tell them to get the @#$% off my feeder like a crazy person.

This was a found skull, it's in poor shape. All of the teeth have fallen out and the underside of the brain cavity is completely gone. Still there's something quite lovely about it. I managed to paint this after dinner despite all our usual evening chaos.

Another watercolor exploration. There really is something lovely about sitting and working with watercolor. I'm really looking forward to some time contemplating all these paintings/drawings at the finish of this project. I filmed a timelapse video of this one. I'll post it as soon as I get a chance to edit it.

One of my favorite animals and favorite skulls in my collection. I find this oil paper to be a challenging surface to work on. It definitely forces me to really focus, not as much play when it comes to pushing paint around. It's nice for these quick sketches though. I am loving the contrast of brightly toned surface peeking through these almost monotone paintings.

I live on property and am gifted with the privilege of seeing this beautiful animal every day, usually several times. I will never tire of watching them. Summer is my favorite when the fawns are playing in the field.

Today was a lesson in perseverance. I don't feel well, but I took my time and pushed through. I felt a line drawing best represented how delicate this skull is. None of the skull bones have fused because of how young this little deer was. A sad reflection of how fragile life is.

Easily one of the most intriguing if not unnerving skulls that I have. While this skull is not large, it definitely gives reason to fear the awesome power these primates have in their jaws. That canine is a whopping 1.5 inches long, longer than any of the other carnivore skulls I have. It also has front facing orbitals, just like a human. It makes contemplating this skull a thought provoking process. It's beautiful and fearsome, but deserves respect and admiration.

30 minute timed sketch with Cretacolor 2B thick graphite lead. Loose and fun, and under the pressure of time. This skull has a really cool profile, of course I didn't draw that. This is another one of my favorite skulls. I have several narrative paintings planned with this one.

I love this goat skull. I wanted to paint it in oils but the panels I toned just aren't dry enough so I opted to switch gears and paint this in watercolor. Another reminder of how much I love watercolor. I feel it served the uniqueness of this skull well.

If you enter your email you are signing up for my Monthly Art Newsletter featuring new paintings, and studio news and updates. You will receive a welcome email within 24 hours, if you do not receive it, please check your spam mailbox. Thank you.